The Appreciation Project (October 2018)

The Appreciation Project (October 2018)

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Practicing the Science and Art of Gratitude

Practicing gratitude is perspective-shifting in a way that feels needed right now. We all know that more gratitude would remind us of our blessings and make us happier. Yet we don’t make a habit of it. Come learn about the science and art of gratitude. Then, write 20 notes of appreciation to people in your life. Given our national mood, it’s a good time to think about the people we care about and give them a surprise boost by appreciating them.

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Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. - Melody Beattie

“The more grateful I am, the more beauty I see.” – Mary Davis

Who are you thankful for? Who do you love, respect, or admire? Feeling gratitude changes how we see and live in the world. When we are grateful, we're happier, more optimistic, healthier, and more resilient. Yet so many of us don't take the time to reflect on our blessings. Given the sometime disspiriting national news, it’s feels like a good time to do that.

The Appreciation Project is a two-month opportunity to bring more gratitude into your life. For three weeks, we'll learn the science of gratitude and appreciation (for the purposes of this course, we’re defining "gratitude" as the feeling you have and "appreciation" as sharing that feeling with someone else). Then we get to the core of TAP: writing notes of appreciation to people you’re grateful for. Some of those prompts might include showing your appreciation to:

a family member

a former teacher

a childhood friend you haven’t seen in 10 years

someone who gave you good customer service

somone who has passed away

someone with whom you have a complicated relationship

an organization who does great work in the community

a neighbor who’s always helpful

a friend who use a little moral boost dealing with a tough life moment?

“The deepest craving of human nature is the need to be appreciated.” – William James

By writing these appreciation notes, you’ll be sharing your gratitude, helping make other people’s lives a little more meaningful. By doing this together as a cohort, you’ll get generative ideas about who and what to appreciate in others. You’ll get inspired by your classmates’ letters to and acts for their people. As we learn and take from each other, your prose will become more powerful and more meaningful and your acts will be more fun and creative. And as you do this, the exercise will reverberate and spread into other people’s lives.

October 10: The science of gratitude, starting gratitude journals

October 17: The philosophy of gratitude, understanding appreciation

October 24: The prose of appreciation, preparing our lists of people to appreciate

Douglas Tsoi is the founder of PUGS and instructor of many courses. He uses education as a vehicle for community. If you've taken taken any of his courses, like Financial Freedom or How to Train, you know that people feel empowered to make change in their lives and more connected to others in the classroom. This course is his effort to bring gratitude into people's lives, and his too. He'll be doing the exercises with you.

In class, he'll be writing letters to his dad and stepsister, pictured here.